Exceptions and Rules: Success Stories and Bad Governance in Russia

1. Exceptions and Rules:Success Stories and Bad Governance in Russia Vladimir Gel’man (European University at St.Petersburg / University of Helsinki) ASEEES Annual Convention, Boston, 7 December 2018

2. Success Stories and Bad Governance... • Present-day Russia is an example of bad governance: poor quality of the Russian state (according to World Bank, World Justice Project, and other agencies), well below the degree of Russia’s socio-economic development; • BUT! • There are many examples of successful developmental-oriented state policies in Russia: • - in certain sectors of economy (such as agriculture – Wengle, 2017); • - in governing of certain regions of Russia (such as Tatarstan – Yakovlev et al., 2018) • - in activities of certain state agencies (such as the Central Bank of Russia – Johnson, 2016) • What are the relationships between bad governance and success stories?

3. Success Stories and Bad Governance... • How one can explain certain (not-so-rare) successes amid overall mediocrity? • Why many success stories and partial and temporary and resulted in limited contagion effect? • The argument: many success stories may be considered the other side of the coin of bad governance; • Key elements: interests of political leaders and policy entrepreneurs (such as legitimation, career advancements, the increase of budget and/or of influence, compensatory functions); • Incentives for developmental projects are unsustainable due to changing policy priorities and poor chances on institutionalization: major holes in ”pockets of efficiency” (Geddes, 1994)

4. Success Stories and Bad Governance... • Some reservations: • ”Success stories” (in this presentation) are real achievements of state-directed projects and programs, which are aimed toward broadly understood socio-economic development of the country and/or its territories in certain areas (technology, science, education, etc.) or at least some attempts to achieve these goals, which demonstrated an outstanding over-performance; • What can NOT be considered as ”success stories” : • ”Potemkin villages” – showcase examples of success, which are aimed exclusively to demonstration effects; • Fake achievements, based on misreporting and fraud (numerous doping scandals, ”cotton affair” in the late Soviet Union, etc.)

5. Success Stories and Bad Governance... • Case study – the Soviet space program; • The most important and visible developmental success in the Soviet Union after WWII; • A fantastic jump-start in the 1950s-60s, plateau-like trajectory in the 1970s-80s, and subsequent long decline after the Soviet collapse • The winning combination of personal priorities of political leadership (Khrushchev) and highly efficient policy entrepreneurship (Korolev); • Human mission in the space – very risky and expensive venture; • Demonstration effects of sputnik (1957) and especially of Gagarin’s orbital mission (1961) – carte blanche for ”Moon race” with the US, important compensatory functions (“but we are making rockets” - Vizbor, 1964); • After ousting of Khrushchev – change of priorities, Korolev’s death, chain of catastrophes in 1967-1971: gradual loss of status of ”success story”

6. Success Stories and Bad Governance... • A trajectory of success story: • (1) policy priorities of political leadership contributed to extraordinary strong support of certain top priority projects and to major patronage towards key figures in these projects and programs; • (2) a relatively quick successful achievement of goals of top priority projects, which is resulted in major symbolic effects because of over-concentration of resources; • (3) limited ”contagion effects”, partly due to the special conditions of implementation of top priority projects; • (4) a major change of policy priorities (often due to changes of leaders and/or of key figures in top priority projects); • (5) a subsequent loss of previous status of success story

7. Success Stories and Bad Governance... • What are the ingredients of success stories and why they faced with ”shitization” (Zaostrovtsev, 2009) over time? • Personal priority support of top-level political leadership; • Highly effective efforts of major policy entrepreneurs (such as ministers, governors, university rectors, company managers and the like), • BUT! • The combination of resources, institutions, and incentives nearly doomed success stories to almost unavoidable constraints: • (1) shortage of resources for long-term domestic and international competition and limited number of top priority projects; • (2) unsustainable incentives of both political leaders and policy entrepreneurs for achievement of successes and their transfer to other projects and programs

8. Success Stories and Bad Governance... • Short-term incentives of political leaders: • ”Roving bandits” (Olson, 1993) – limited time horizon of policy planning, especially in personalist authoritarian regimes; • Attempts of quick achievement of demonstration effects of success stories in some policy areas at the expense of others (Khrushchev as a clear example of that); • Short-term incentives of policy entrepreneurs: • Risks of long-term projects due to reshuffling of cadres, changing rules of the game, and/or changing policy priorities of top political leadership; • Insufficient institutional incentives for policy successes (the case of regional leadership in China and in Russia); • The combination of very high density and very poor quality of state regulations in Russia dramatically increased risks of initiatives for policy entrepreneurs

9. Success Stories and Bad Governance... • Side effects: • The competition of policy entrepreneurs with each other and with “pure” sent-seekers for patronage of political leadership (patronage is a necessary yet insufficient condition of success stories); • Over-concentration of resources is necessary for achievement of success stories (successes of the few actors = failures of many actors); • Very high costs of some successful projects their inefficient state regulation (beyond deliberately made special conditions); • Weak potential for reaching multiplicative/contagion effects; • Many success stories in Russia are not exceptions, which proved the rule of bad governance; rather, they served as an indispensable part of this politico-economic order

10. Success Stories and Bad Governance... • Case study – Higher School of Economics (NRU HSE); • A quarter century (from 1992) of transition from a small training program in market economy to the most successful Russia’s state university; • Active involvement in policy-making (governmental programs, drafts of laws, etc.), cooperation with most important state officials (orders, contracts, buildings, state-funded studentships, etc.), efficient international integration, policy toward academic personnel and managerial cadres…; • Kuzminov as a highly efficient policy entrepreneur + effects of personal union; • Strategy of extensive growth and development (too big to fail) • BUT! • Very unfavorable political and economic climate in Russia for institutions like HSE, increasing risks and risk perceptions… what next?

11. Success Stories and Bad Governance... • Case study – «5-100» state program (the advancement of five Russia’s state universities to top-100 of three global university rankings up until 2020), officially approved in 2013; • The attempt to achieve multiplicative/contagion effects (“to be like HSE”), promoted by Livanov (until 2016) and Kuzminov as policy entrepreneurs; • Orientation on demonstration effects, which could compensative numerous deficiencies of the Russian higher education; • Insufficient time frame of the program (similar goals in China were achieved in a longer period of time) and short-term incentives; • Insufficient financial resources (57+ billion rubles), spread among twenty-one universities, selected and chosen by the state; • Internationalization of universities vis-a-vis hysteria of state sovereignty; • Mixed effects of the first stage of implementation of the program (some advancements yet no chances to achieve declared goals, changing priorities of political leadership)

12. Success Stories and Bad Governance... • Why success stories are isolated and their diffusion is so limited? • Mechanisms of diffusion of policy innovations (Powell, Di Maggio, 1983): (1) coercive (by force); (2) normative (by accepted social norms); (3) mimetic (by role models); • These mechanisms served as major inhibitors for diffusions of success stories in present-day Russia and beyond: • (1) sanctions for poor performance (lack of success) are weak, while risks of pursuit of policy success are high; • (2) social norms produced incentives not for pursuit of developmental success but for passive preservation of status-quo; • (3) role models are successful rent-seekers rather than successful policy entrepreneurs (to be like Yakunin rather then like Gref);

13. Success Stories and Bad Governance... • Present-day Russia – an average country of the 21st century from the viewpoint of its development (see ”a normal country” debate); • Its current and future developmental success stories are by and large niche-based; • The increasing role of compensatory functions of success stories contributed to increasing demands for successes from both elites and mass public (search of substitutions for development in other arenas – ”but the Crimea is ours!”) • The gradual exhaustion of infrastructural and personnel resources for new success stories; • To what extent the paradigmatic change is possible – a shift from building of certain isolated ”islands of successes” to increase of overall quality of development and advancement of Russia to higher standards?

14. Success Stories and Bad Governance... • Thanks for your questions and comments! (vgelman@eu.spb.ru, vladimir.gelman@Helsinki.fi )